Many people, including President Obama, has tried to make a “moral
equivalence” argument that Christianity has been just as violent as
Islam and he has to go back one thousand years to do it, back to the
Crusades.

Carole Hillenbrand’s book The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives
(Edinburgh University Press, 1999) sets out to sensitize Western
readers to Muslim views about the Crusades, in the belief that this
will lead to greater understanding between the West and Islam.

In the late 1990s a “Reconciliation Walk” was organized by a group
of Christian organizations and individuals. It consisted of
thousands of Christians who marched along the route of the First
Crusade all the way to Jerusalem, apologizing as they went for the
actions of those early Crusaders over nine hundred years earlier.

The reconciliation walkers
reported
that “in towns and villages, people spilled out of their houses and
applauded the team as they passed.” One walker reported the response
from people in Beirut:

If you did this in London or Sydney, you would expect a cynical
response. The response from the people on the streets [of Beirut],
particularly the Muslims, has been warm. The first word I have heard
is “good.” If there were such a word as “uncynical” that [would] be
the way to describe it.

Michael Karam, a Lebanese writer, painted this incident in a
different hue in The Times article, “Let’s forget the Crusades”:

The Reconciliation Walkers are terribly sincere and terribly out of
their depth. Their words tell us more about where they are from than
where they are going… We Lebanese see them as dabblers concerned
with something that has been overtaken by many other, worse horrors
during the past millennium. Yet in the best Lebanese tradition, they
will be received with honour, listened to, offered coffee and sent
on their way.

In order to take an unvarnished look at the Crusades, one needs to
look at several factors that precipitated these military campaigns
by Christians.

What were the Christian crusades?

First of all, the crusades should not be referred to as the
“Christian crusades.” Most of the people involved in the crusades
were not truly Christians, even though they claimed to be. The name
of Christ was abused, misused, and blasphemed by the actions of many
of the Crusaders.

Second, the crusades took place from approximately A.D. 1095 to 1230
in response to specific actions taken by Muslims against Christian
lands. The actions taken by many of the Crusaders were not Christian
in any way and the Bible does not teach as a general principal that
one needs to hate or kill non-believers.

Third, the crusades were responses to Muslim invasions on what was
once land occupied primarily by Christians. From approximately A.D.
200 to 900, the lands of
Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey
were inhabited primarily by Christians. Once Islam became powerful,
Muslims invaded these lands and brutally oppressed, enslaved,
deported, and even murdered the Christians living there. In
response, the Roman Catholic Church and “Christian” kings/emperors
from Europe ordered the crusades to reclaim the land the Muslims had
taken.

Motives for the Crusades

The
Saljuq Turkish
victory over the Byzantines at
Manzikert
in 1071, with subsequent territorial gains in
Asia Minor,
caused widespread consternation throughout the Christian world. The
Byzantines, who had long followed a defensive strategy in their
conflicts with their Muslim adversaries,
looked for help
from their fellow Christians. An urgent appeal for help was sent by
the Byzantine Emperor to the Pope in Rome. It should be noted that
relations between the Eastern and Western Christian empires had long
been strained, so such an appeal points to the sense of panic felt
within Christian ranks.

But there were other factors that contributed to the emergence of
the Crusades. The loss of the holy sites in Jerusalem centuries
earlier had been a bitter pill for Christian authorities to swallow,
and they had never given up hope of recapturing the city where Jesus
was crucified. Indeed, despite the loss of Jerusalem to Muslims,
Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land had
developed.

However, in the middle of the eleventh century, Muslim harassment
of, and attacks upon, Christian pilgrims had increased in frequency.
Lambert, a chronicler of the German pilgrimage of seven thousand
people in 1064–65, recorded the following account:

When the pilgrims were just a short distance from Rama … they were
attacked by marauding Arabs… Many of the Christians, thinking they
might rely on their religion for assistance and salvation, had
trusted in God’s protection rather than in weapons. They were, as a
result of the first attack, brought down by many wounds and robbed.…
The other Christians did their best by throwing stones … not so much
to drive away danger as a desperate measure to escape imminent
death.

So piety was a motivating force for such pilgrimages, as well as for
certain participants in the ensuing Crusades. A belief in eternal
reward justified a concept of holy war, and this proved to be a
powerful attraction for many who joined the Crusades. The
twelfth-century writer
Guibert of Nogent
clearly believed the crusading motive was primarily a quest for
eternal salvation:

“What has driven our knights thither is not ambition for fame, for
money, for extending the boundaries of their lands … God has
instituted in our time holy wars, so that the order of knights and
the crowd running in their wake … might find a new way of gaining
salvation.”

Some other motives had less of a spiritual dimension. Military
campaigns always brought with them promises of wealth and plunder.
Motives of personal ambition also came into play, as did hopes for
trading opportunities. Once again, Hallam expresses both the
complexity and diversity of motives according to different groups
who participated in the campaigns:

Complex though their motives were, it is easier to understand why
knights joined the First Crusade than to explain the participation
of hordes of peasant … The theme of Jerusalem was all-important to
them. They undertook the expedition not as a military campaign but
as a pilgrimage, an important feature of 11th century life.

The First Crusade (1096–99)

The First Crusade was precipitated by a statement by Pope Urban II
in September 1096:

Anyone who sets out on that journey, not out of lust for worldly
advantage but only for the salvation of his soul and for the
liberation of the Church, is remitted in entirety all penance for
his sins, if he has made a true and perfect act of confession.

Ironically, this promise of eternal reward for participating in holy
war is strongly reminiscent of a similar call in the Qur’an at Sura
3:158:

And if ye die, or are slain, Lo! It is unto Allah that ye are
brought together.

There are two significant differences though. First, the Christian
call for holy war was made by a human pope and as such was subject
to challenge by later theologians. The Muslim call to jihad,
however, is cemented within the Qur’an for all time. Second, the
doctrine of holy war has now largely fallen into disuse in Christian
circles, whereas jihad as a military concept is still widely
practiced by some Muslim groups.

Subsequent Crusades

Many crusading campaigns followed on from the first. These crusades
have many aspects in common.

The Second Crusade
lasted from 1147 to 1149 and was launched in response to the loss in
1146 of the Crusader principality of Edessa to Muslim attackers.
Pope Eugene III called for a new crusade to recover the lost
territory:

We enjoin you in the name of the Lord and for the remission of your
sins … that the faithful of God, and above all the most powerful and
the nobles act vigorously to oppose the multitude of the infidel …
and strive to liberate from their hands the many thousands of our
brethren who are captives.… We accord them that same remission of
sins that our predecessor Pope Urban instituted.

Again there is a promise of forgiveness of sins associated with the
campaign. This crusade ended in a failed attempt to capture
Damascus.

The Third Crusade
lasted from 1189 to 1192 and was launched after the fall of
Jerusalem to the Muslim warrior Salah al-Din (Saladin) on October 2,
1187. Saladin’s armies had also captured
Acre, Beirut, Sidon,
and other prominent Christian strongholds.

Pope Gregory VIII called for a crusade on October 29, 1187, in
similar terms to the calls of his predecessors. Some land was
recaptured, including Acre in July 1191 after a two-year siege, but
not Jerusalem. It was to remain under Muslim control for over seven
hundred years.

The loss of Jerusalem and the tentative hold the Crusaders had on
the recaptured land led to an increase in the frequency of
subsequent Crusades.

In 1198 Pope Innocent III issued a call for a crusade to consolidate
Christian territory in the Holy Land and offered an indulgence:

All those who take the Cross and remain for one year in the service
of God in the army shall obtain remission of any sins they have
committed, provided they have confessed them.

The resulting Fourth Crusade lasted from 1202 to 1204. From a
Christian perspective this was one of the most disastrous. Events
took an unexpected turn due to political intrigue and power
struggles. The crusading knights eventually directed their campaign
not against Muslim adversaries but against the Byzantine Empire
itself, because of Western suspicion at seeming Byzantine
willingness to compromise with Muslims. Constantinople was attacked
and captured by Crusader forces, and a Western ruler was put on the
Byzantine throne.

Pope Innocent III was furious at the conquest of Constantinople. He
bitterly rebuked the papal legate who accompanied the Crusaders:

It was your duty to attend to the business of your legation and to
give careful thought not to the capture of the Empire of
Constantinople, but rather to the defense of what is left of the
Holy Land and, if the Lord so wills, the restoration of what has
been lost.…

How can we call upon the other Western peoples for aid to the Holy
Land … when the crusaders having given up the proposed pilgrimage,
return absolved to their homes; when those who plundered the
aforesaid empire turn back and return with their spoils, free of
guilt?

After such a development, subsequent crusading campaigns were
tainted. Further Crusades took place, but they were unsuccessful.
Little by little the various Crusader strongholds fell to Muslim
armies, often with great brutality. A chronicler described a Muslim
raid on
Sidon (Saida)
in 1253:

When [the Saracens] heard the report (a true one) that the king had
sent no more than a very small contingent of good men to fortify the
city of Saida, they marched in that direction.… The Saracens poured
into Saida and met with no resistance, for the town was not
completely surrounded by walls. They killed more than two thousand
[sic] of our people, and then went off to Damascus with the booty
they had gained in the town.

The year 1291 witnessed the end of the crusading venture with the
fall of Acre, followed by the loss of the last remaining coastal
towns.

An Assessment

The Crusades were characterized by savagery and intolerance. But it
was mutual mistreatment, following on from centuries of bloody
conflict, massacre, and Muslim imperial expansion. The victims of
this recurring cycle of conflict were Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
Likewise, the perpetrators were both Muslims and Christians.

Ancient Criticisms

Criticism of the Crusades among Christians is not a recent
phenomenon. Indeed, there was a vigorous debate during the time of
the Crusades, as recorded by Humbert of Romans, who wrote a response
to critics of crusading in the late thirteenth century:

“There are some … who say that it is not in accordance with the
Christian religion to shed blood in this way, even that of wicked
infidels. For Christ did not act thus.… [But Christianity] must be
defended when necessary from its enemies by the sword.”

It should be remembered that the Crusades were a link in the chain
of history. They represented the response of the Christian world to
the earlier Islamic expansion and to the loss of the Byzantine
territories in the Middle East and North Africa. They do, of course,
raise substantial moral issues, but consideration of these should
not be divorced from the historical context.

For Christians, there is much to apologize for in the Crusades, but
they in no way can be used to justify the brutality and carnage that
is taking place in the world today in the name of Islam.